


The Stray

by shootingstarcipher



Category: Eerie Indiana
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mental Instability, Pining, Self-Harm, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-28
Updated: 2017-12-02
Packaged: 2019-02-08 04:20:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12856626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shootingstarcipher/pseuds/shootingstarcipher
Summary: While a world of distractions hung heavy in his head, Dash remained grey and hollow, his trademark bleakness disguising any spark of humanity within him – sometimes even hiding it from himself – but still burning a hole in the back of his skull with its incessant questions, until finally he decided it didn’t matter who he was or where he came from and a new obsession took over, instantly and inexplicably replacing the old.





	1. [Prologue] Killer

Just like the specks of blood buried underneath his fingernails, a boy with no name found himself in a scenario from which he had no hope of escaping. He should have been used to it by now – and he would have been, had he any memories of his earlier life. But as he lay there, half-covered in dust on the rough, painful wooden floor of the Old Mill, his memories were more than just murky; they were totally and utterly inaccessible to his consciousness, assuming they were at all. He had no proof that they did exist though they must have done, as he must have come from somewhere – everybody did – and it became his ambition then to discover them, nothing but the haunted walls of the derelict Old Mill as his witnesses.

He declared his intentions out loud, even while knowing there was nobody around to hear him. His voice surprised even himself, sounding gruffer and slightly more aggressive than he’d meant it to. But then he smirked to himself, realising that if it was such a surprise to him, he could probably cause any other person to suffer a cardiac arrest with just one word if he tried hard enough. Of course, he’d never go through with that, but there was nothing unappealing about having the option.

With no regard whatsoever to hygiene, he nibbled away the dried blood that had somehow gotten trapped beneath his fingernails, gnawing incessantly until there was no proof any blood had ever touched him. It wasn’t his own (he had no wounds as far as he could tell and aside from that, it wouldn’t have wound up where it did if it had been his own). Its metallic taste was oddly enticing and it was only then that he became aware of his own hunger and he had to stifle a growl, determined eyes automatically searching in the dark for anything even remotely edible to satisfy his need.

Wiping dust from his long, almost floor-length black jacket, he skulked towards the tiny sliver of dim light creeping in from under the door and, making sure to keep to the shadows, he headed out into the sunset with hunger on his mind. He wondered when he’d last eaten and, for that matter, how long he’d been unconscious in the Old Mill.

All that stood between himself and his thoughts were the echoes of his footsteps as they resonated against the frosty concrete below, his black boots doing barely anything to shield him from the harsh bitterness of the outside. The tips of his fingers were numb but not yet at the point of turning blue and so he rubbed his hands together, slipping his hands up inside his sleeves in the process in search of warmth. 

A puddle of dull, cloudy rainwater soon caught his attention when he accidentally stepped in it, the freezing cold water flooding his left boot immediately, but a quick glance down made him stop for a moment and forget about the cold entirely. The dirty, pale, bleak looking boy staring back at his unrecognisable. Yet it must have been him. This was his reflection, and it looked nothing like he’d expected it to – not that he’d had any idea of what he looked like beforehand.

His most obvious abnormality was his wispy despondent grey hair that seemed, at least to him, to be the perfect image of melancholy. From where he stood, staring down at the water despairingly, the colour of his narrowed, devious-looking eyes remained a mystery but they appeared hollow and dead, holding barely a spark of emotion within them. Then, with his thin lips pulled into a smirk, he glanced down at his hands, each of which had been marked with a symbol – a plus sign on his right and a minus sign on his left… or an X on his right and a dash on his left, depending on his perspective.

Ignoring the cold as it spread up to his ankle, he turned his back on his reflection as he splashed his way through the puddle of rainwater and prowled along, sticking close to the wall beside him as he wandered not so aimlessly down a chain of shady-looking streets and alleyways until – after what could have very well been nearly an hour – the low, defensive growl of a feral... something, a dog or a fox, surely, struck him as intriguing. If nothing else, he could at least catch the animal for food. It was at that moment that he realised he would have killed to survive – maybe not a person, maybe not right then, but an innocent animal wasn’t about to get in his way of finding food.

A stealthy silhouette crossed his path and he stopped dead, eyes locked onto it. It remained sneaky, silent, clandestine. But so did he.

Taking a defensive stance – and in that way mirroring the beast before him – he crouched low to the ground, staring right into the animal’s almost luminous yellowish eyes. He squinted slightly, trying to get a better look at it, and then it became apparent that it was no sort of animal he’d seen before. The size of a fox, but more feline than dog-like in its appearance. The aggressive sounds bubbling from its throat, however, were far more like the carnal snarls of a wolf than the helpless mewls of a lost wandering cat.

Whatever it was, it was either going to lead him to his meal, or become it.

Seeming to sense his hostility, the creature let out another threatening growl, blinked at him, and then sprung out of sight momentarily before reappearing on top of the red-bricked wall beside him, glaring down at him defensively. The boy without a name glared back, straightening his back up and staring up at the strange animal defiantly. A silent demand for food. As if understanding his plea, it trotted along the wall with all the grace and elegance of a tigress but the aura of arrogance of some megalomaniacal dictator. A smirk appeared on the grey-haired boy’s face. This was the kind of creature he could get along with.

Until it dove feet-first into the massive rubbish bin below, dagger-like talons poised for attack and then clinging onto the very first edible thing it could find – in a way, doing the boy’s work for him – and refusing to give it up, insisting that the half-eaten cheeseburger belonged to it and it alone. Driven on by his hunger, he found himself swiping frantically at the feral creature in a heartbeat, very nearly foaming at the mouth with desperation. During a short but feverish fight, he sustained several minor scratches and a larger, deeper gash across his forehead, but he considered it worth it for the bite of the burger he managed to get (though the animal limped away with most of the burger still in its possession, having eaten some of it already).

He watched it sneak away without a sound, still chewing the small bite of the burger he’d managed to get hold of, and contemplated the strange animal as he knelt there in the rubbish bin, surrounded by the filth he was realising was vital for his survival.

Its dark, reddish fur stuck up in tufts and had clearly in some places fallen out in chunks, exposing its scarred pink skin underneath which it wore like a delicate battle wound that, despite its pain and ugliness, held with it pride and achievement. Like it had fought off more grey-haired weirdos than anyone could count. And it probably had. Those yellowed, jagged teeth and razor-sharp claws could have fought off any number of starving strays, human or otherwise.

So, as he watched it slink away he was filled with a feeling of awe, but also ambition – a determination that next time, he wouldn’t lose.

Hunting around for more food, because that single bite wasn’t able to satisfy his starvation, the boy whose name was forgotten found only a minimal number of scraps, the edibility of which was beyond questionable, but wolfed them all down anyway regardless of flavour or hygiene. Survival was more important. And, in the name of survival, he swallowed down the last remaining mouthfuls of cold, contaminated coffee from a plastic cup he found on the cracked concrete of the entrance to the alley, and with the empty cup scooped up as much of the puddle as he could on his way back to the Old Mill – a place which, given that it was the only place he now knew, was swiftly becoming his home.

Home. What an alien concept. Home didn’t exist, really, for anyone, so he disregarded the idea that he must have had one entirely, even if anyone else would have argued otherwise. He didn’t have anyone else. There was only him – and occasionally, an animal that was neither cat nor dog, but was most certainly just as much a stray as he was. He was fine with that. He hadn’t met any since losing his memories, but every instinct in his body told him that humans were nothing more than an inconvenience. He could rely on himself and no-one else.

Kindness of strangers? No such thing.

He shouldn’t have been so tired but – whether it was the dark, the cold, or his relentless hunger – the walk back left him exhausted and he collapsed onto the floor almost the second he crept through the door. And yet sleep was so far out of reach.

Curled up in a corner, cup of water by his side in case the burning ache at the back of his head needed pushing away, he found his gaze fixating itself on his hands again – more specifically, the marks on them. Were they drawn on? He didn’t think so. Was he born with them? That didn’t seem likely either. Pretty strange birthmarks, if that was what they were. A plus and a minus. A dash and an X. Dash X. That’s what he’d call himself, at least until he learned his real name – he must have had one, after all. Besides, it was a much better name than Plus Minus.

Then again, did strays bother with names?


	2. Loved

Lacking an identity, other than his own made-up name, the grey-haired boy unknowingly slipped into a constant state of obsession, stopping at nothing not just to survive, but to uncover the life he used to have – before the Old Mill had become all he knew. In less than three months he had learned how to live off his wits and animal instincts, avoiding civilians and rarely straying from the cover of darkness, but it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough to just survive. A continued existence meant very little if he had no identity, no awareness of his own character.

Out there, somewhere, there could have been someone looking for him. A family, perhaps. Part of him hoped so. A smaller part of him hoped they’d succeed, but most of him thought it was already too late. He wasn’t who he used to be. Now he was a stranger, a renegade, someone outside the law and outside of everything else as well. Dash X, on his own, a lone wolf, whether he had someone who loved him or not. Because as far as he was concerned, the idea that you should love someone simply because they were related was preposterous, and such emotions were nothing more than mere illusions anyway. They’d forget about him soon enough – just as he’d already forgotten them.

He often slept during the day and prowled the streets at night, but there were times when he needed to be about in daylight, like the days he spent hunting for information in old newspapers at the library, or questioning as many strangers as possible about anyone else they may have seen with hair like his own, in case he did indeed have a family somewhere in Eerie, waiting for him to come home. They would have found him by then, surely? If they did live in Eerie, of course, and there was no guarantee that they did.

When he did occasionally break his rule regarding disrupting his own solitude by communicating – which really, where Dash was concerned, meant interrogating (and not peacefully either) – with the Eerie locals, he always made sure to keep his hands out of sight (at first by tucking his hands up inside his sleeves until he managed to acquire a pair of black gloves through means unauthorised) and never mentioned the marks on them, even if they were probably the likeliest of ways to get someone to pay attention to him and help him uncover the truth about himself. 

Not knowing what those marks meant was potentially dangerous. He wouldn’t have put himself passed being some sort of criminal escape artist, on the run from the law because of those symbols on the backs of his hands. Maybe he belonged to some kind of gang? He hoped so. He could definitely picture himself as the leader of one. And he wouldn’t have put a so-called stranger passed caging him or putting him in some freak show, especially if those marks were as important as he suspected they were. They could have meant anything. But for now, they were nothing but his name.

His days and nights were mundane, a repetitive routine encompassing his obsession and eventually causing it to dwindle. Sleeping, eating and hunting (either for information on his forgotten past or for anything that would help him to survive for at least one more monotonous day) until finally, his routine was broken.

It took three months for Marshall Teller to come into his life. Three months for him to break into the Old Mill, video camera at the ready, and shatter Dash’s dreary routine into a million pieces.

He was ready to declare war immediately. The moment he heard voices and footsteps approaching his, well, his home – rotten and derelict as it was – his curiosity was piqued. Instinctive defensive stance taken, he crouched behind a veil of shadows, listening intently as the intruders entered the Old Mill with caution, though little regard for anyone who may have lived there. What Dash felt as he hid close to the ground, a low, distrustful growl dying to burst out through his throat, was nothing short of contempt. There was no fear in his hollowed-out shell of a heart, but only scorn and derision. Nobody but him had any business there. He was always careful not to get caught trespassing and he would have preferred for others to do the same – or better yet, not cross over into his territory at all.

And to make it worse, he caught them rummaging through the few possessions he had to his name – a spare change of ragged old clothes, his next (stolen) meal, and a gun he’d found under the floorboards of the Old Mill, as well as the backpack he kept them in. He’d considered selling it when he’d first found it, on the black market of course, and not in the presence of police or the law-abiding citizens on Eerie, but then he’d seen sense. Nobody got anywhere on the streets without a weapon. That knowledge had by now become automatic.

And now his weapon, his only weapon (aside from his fists), was in the hands of a trespassing stranger.

His hoarse, brusque voice was the first indication of his presence he gave to the invaders. He cleared his throat and, as he stepped out of the darkness, mocked them both with the intimidating composure he prided himself on. They’d mocked him first, after all, questioning the sanity of a person who would dare live in a supposedly haunted house. All he did was question theirs. “Messing with a crazy person’s stuff? Not the brightest idea,” he scoffed, a knowing smirk appearing on his face at the sight of their horrified expressions. He wasn’t really going to hurt them. Probably. He just wanted them to leave. That was all.

It was amusing, to him at least – the way they dropped everything they were holding (but not the camera, unfortunately) the instant he made his presence known, and then stood there, utterly gormless, as if awaiting instruction. He decided he could get used to that – people waiting around for him to sit back and bark orders at him. That was exactly the kind of life he wanted to have.

Until Marshall suddenly spoke up and his illusions of the power he wished he truly possessed were splintered and smashed with a single choked-out sentence. “So why do you live here?”

Dash ground his teeth together in frustration, irritated by the sudden fragmentation of his delusion and not only that, but by the fact that his intruders – or at least one of them – was talking back to him, ignoring his mockery and already asking too many questions for them to have any hope at getting along. So, in retaliation, Dash ignored his question and snatched the gun up from the floor without a word, earning an anxious glance from the intruder who had not yet spoken.

After months of practising, though he had never once fired the gun, he’d learned to hold it steady in his hand even in spite of the freezing temperatures of the outside air. It may have been nothing but an act – a pretence stemming from the power he felt he was entitled to – but as he growled at them not to move, that it was too late for them to get away and that they’d seen too much already, it became clear that he was far better an actor than he’d previously given himself credit for. They were completely and utterly convinced. He could practically see their own lives flashing before their eyes. So he put them out of their misery and, with a dark, mysterious chuckle, replaced his menacing sneer with a more light-hearted one.

“Relax,” he laughed, a little more ominously than he’d intended. The intruders defied his instruction, remaining tense, which in turn only made him more intimidating. “I said relax!” he hissed, swiping at the one closest to him in a frenzy and snatching at his throat, his frustration outweighing his intention not to cause a panic. The slightly taller boy squirmed in his grasp and took a trembling step backwards, but remained far calmer than Dash X had expected him to. He was almost ever so slightly impressed. 

“It’s kinda hard to relax when you’re yelling at us.” His voice faltered only slightly, but a sliver of fear was still visible behind his darkened eyes – something which Dash found oddly hypnotic.

His red-headed companion nodded eagerly in agreement and Dash finally stepped away, releasing his grip and softening his gaze. But he had no intention of apologising. “Yeah, well,” he began, eyeing up the trespassers with suspicion. “You should have thought about that before you came barging in here and…” He paused, steely gaze shifting to the camera they’d brought in with them, still recording. He couldn’t have that. He couldn’t afford for anyone else to find out he lived there (even if something like that could help him find the family he most certainly had to have, he doubted it was worth drawing so much attention to himself, especially if someone really was after him because of those marks) and he had no reason to trust these two interloping strangers to delete the video at his command, or to allow no-one else to see it.

With one swift, fluid movement, he crashed his fist straight into the camera and knocked it out of the dark-haired trespasser’s grasp, sending it plummeting to the dusty old floor. And, just to be absolutely sure it would never come back to haunt him, he slammed his foot down on top of it, crushing it beneath his weight with a smirk. That was one video the world would never get to see.

The hurt look on their faces as he demolished their creation was not something he’d been searching for, but he did not turn away from it. He was merely doing what was best for himself and felt no shame in that. No guilt, as far as Dash was concerned, meant no pain. But having said that, he had nothing to feel guilty about in the first place. They were the criminals. They were the gate-crashers. They were in the wrong.

Marshall and Simon didn’t see it that way.

They stayed for longer than Dash had anticipated. It seemed that, after most of their fear had been drained away, they thought of him as someone they could talk to, for whatever reason, and not be turned out into the street in anger. At first, Dash was sure that they were wrong.

But they stayed and talked and acted almost like what he imagined friends to be like, and he learned that the short red-headed one was Simon Holmes and the other – a taller brunet with eyes that looked as though they’d seen more than they could handle – was Marshall Teller, and that together they were, as Dash liked to think of them, a teenaged neighbourhood watch gone insane. Investigating the paranormal, exploring the weird and inexplicable… and somehow ending up right on Dash X’s doorstep – or, more precisely, forcing their way into the rotten old building he lived in.

Eerie was the perfect place for them. Nothing normal could ever be found there. Except perhaps for Dash, as he considered himself to be the most normal out of everyone who’d ever lived in Eerie, although Marshall voiced his disagreements without hesitation, stating that anyone whose parents would name them Dash as a first name couldn’t possibly be as normal as someone with a name like his own. And so, the grey-haired boy found himself forced to explain his own origins, or in this case, lack of.

“My parents didn’t call me Dash,” he started, confusion already seeping into his companions’ expressions. “I did.” At least, he assumed they hadn’t give him such a name, but he had no way of knowing for certain (it would have been an awfully huge coincidence if they had, however). Simon watched him in awe as he went on, explaining that he’d woken up there on the cold unforgiving floor of the Old Mill several months beforehand, his memories stolen and any previous knowledge of his identity having been erased entirely. Marshall appeared sceptical and frankly, he didn’t blame him. It was more like something out of a book or fictional television show than reality, though he supposed the same went for everything that happened in Eerie and Marshall should have been getting used to that by now.

When he realised that Marshall’s gaze had became dazed and dreamy, dropped down to the floor where his hands were resting, Dash followed his gaze and glanced down at his hands, the fact that the symbols that had given him his name were visible dawning on him only then. He covered them up on instinct, curling his hands up into the long sleeves of his oversized coat, but it was clearly already too late and he knew it – therefore, he saw no reason not to mention that those very marks were the reason he called himself what he did.

“Dash X,” he repeated, revealing the marks on his hands again (intentionally this time) and allowing Simon to get a better look at them. The expressions on their faces were indecipherable but one thing was clear: Marshall was a lot less sceptical of his story now than he had been before.

They left soon after that, leaving Dash to ponder whether he’d revealed too much about himself. They had no intention of ever seeing him again, he presumed, because as he usually tried to do, he’d scared them off. While he had initially planned on doing just that, he’d found himself peculiarly intrigued by these two gate-crashers – particularly by Marshall – and to that end he snatched his bag from the floor, stashed with all of his belongings, and headed out the door to see the brunet just at the end of the desolate street, about to turn a corner.

A plan had hatched in his dark, cunning mind as soon as he’d seen them leave. Maybe Marshall didn’t want to come near him ever again, but as far as Dash X was concerned, this certainly wasn’t going to be the last they saw of each other.


End file.
